It is a Tuesday afternoon, and Metta is settling into her bus driver's seat, the kind of calm that only comes with four years of doing something you genuinely love.

The bus is large, intimidatingly so, if you have never driven one of these before. But Metta moves through her pre-departure checks with an easy confidence, glancing in her mirrors and ready to go. As she enters her first stop, passengers are waiting and she sees them before they see her. She smiles. “This,” she says, “is my favourite part.”

It is hard to believe, listening to her now, that this is a woman who disliked driving. And yet here she is, a Busways driver of nearly four years, turning up every single day with the kind of enthusiasm that most people spend their whole careers searching for.

“I don’t know many jobs where you’re happy every single day,” she says with a laugh that fills the cab. “But with this job, it doesn’t matter how tired I am. I still want to be here.”

Metta’s story does not begin in Sydney. It begins on a farm in rural Thailand, where she grew up working alongside her parents, learning early that life required effort and that nothing came easily. She was not unhappy. But she was not done, either.

Then, almost by accident, everything changed. She met her now-husband, an Australian, who was visiting on holiday. They got married and had a daughter and one day her husband asked a simple question: would she like to come to Australia and build something together? The question terrified her.

“I didn’t even speak English,” she says. “I didn’t know how to communicate with people.” She pauses. “But he said, if you want a future, you’re going to have to work hard. And I thought: he’s right.”

She arrived in Australia in 2007 with her daughter, a suitcase, and a determination that to work and builds a great life for herself and her family. She got to work immediately, customer service first, then retail, then three years in aged care. Hard work, every one of them. Meaningful work, too. But it was aged care that eventually broke her rhythm.

When COVID arrived, the industry buckled. No rest days. “I still loved what I was doing,” Metta describes. “But it just became too much. I never had rest. There was no day off. And I thought - I have to do something different,” she says carefully.

It was her husband who suggested the bus. He had been in the industry for years and had recently become a trainer at Busways. He knew the hours, the pay, the culture. “You should give it a go,” he told her.

Metta’s first reaction was scepticism. A bus? She had never enjoyed driving a car, let alone something that size. But she had come too far, overcome too much, to be stopped by a little uncertainty. She applied. She trained. And on the morning of her first solo shift, she sat in that driver’s seat and told herself, quietly, that she could do this.

She was almost right. Within the first hour, she took a wrong turn. Passengers on a school run were not pleased. Voices were raised. “My heart was going,” she says. “I said to them, I’m so sorry, this is my first day, please give me a moment.” The bus found its way. The passengers got where they needed to go. And the next morning, Metta returned to the exact same route and told herself she would not make that mistake again.

She never did. What that first day gave her, she says, was something no training program could, the knowledge that she could hold it together when things went wrong. That she could stay calm, speak kindly, and keep the bus moving. “When you do this job,” she says, “you have to be ready for anything. You don’t know what’s going to happen. You just learn how to handle it.”

Ask Metta about her passengers and she could talk for hours. There is the elderly man in Dundas who uses a walker, she makes sure to help him to board the bus slowly and she always waits if she sees him walking towards the bus, without being asked. Months later, his daughter reached out to say that her father talked about his bus driver at home. “At least he’s fine,” Metta says simply. “That’s enough for me.”

One afternoon a passenger boarded who could not speak English and had no idea where to get off. Rather than shrug and keep driving, Metta turned to other passengers onboard and asked if someone could translate. The man’s stop was noted. From that day forward, Metta always knew exactly where to drop him.

During Chinese New Year, a grateful passenger once pressed a lucky red envelope of cash into Metta’s hand as a gift. Metta declined, warmly, but firmly. “I really appreciate what you’re doing,” she told the woman. “But I just can’t take it.” The woman looked at her for a long moment and then nodded.

It is these moments, Metta says, that make the job what it is. “It’s only a little thing you can do each day. But it can mean a lot to someone else.”

There is something quietly remarkable about the fact that bus driving has become a shared language in Metta’s household. Her husband trains the next generation of Busways’ drivers. She is out on the road, putting everything he preaches into practice. He offers tips, share experiences, and talks her through the difficult moments.

“The real learning,” she says, “happens on the road. That is something you do yourself.”

Together, they have built something in Australia that neither of them could have predicted, a life held up, in no small part, by the steadiness this industry provides.

At the depot, Metta is one of a small number of women drivers. “Most passengers are surprised to see a small woman driving a big bus,” she says. “The way they look at you, it just gives you this feeling. Okay. I made their day!”

When Metta talks to women about the job, she is pragmatic as much as she is enthusiastic. The money is good, better than many roles women typically find themselves in. The hours are genuinely flexible: morning runs, afternoon runs, the ability to structure your week around your family. Weekend shifts pay penalty rates. Superannuation is included. “There are not many jobs that give you that kind of money and that kind of time,” she says. “For women, especially, I recommend it.”

Her advice to anyone intimidated by the sheer size of the vehicle is delivered with a grin. “Just have a go. Give yourself a few weeks. The longer you do it, the better it gets. You get to know the people; you get to know the run, and it becomes yours.”

Metta arrived in Australia seventeen years ago without English, and without any clear idea of what her life here would look like. She did not come this far to settle for less. She tried things, changed course, kept going. Bus driving was not the plan. It turned out to be better than any plan she had made.

If her story has you thinking, Busways operates depots across Greater Sydney. There is an opportunity to be bus driver and serve your community. The application process is straightforward, training is thorough, and a Busways Career Open Day is the perfect first step, a chance to meet the team, see the buses, and ask every question you have been sitting on.

You might find, as Metta did, that the job you never considered is the one you cannot imagine leaving.

If you wish to apply for Bus driving simply click on the link below: https://careers.busways.com.au/